


Skeletons in the Closet

by ACSQ



Category: Beetlejuice (1988), Beetlejuice (Cartoon 1989), Beetlejuice - All Media Types, Beetlejuice - Perfect/Brown & King
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Author Is Sleep Deprived, Beetlebabes if you squint, Beetlejuice References, Best Friends, Cartoon references, Enemies to Friends, F/M, Movie References, Musical References, Tags May Change, beetlebabes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-20
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:20:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24280465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ACSQ/pseuds/ACSQ
Summary: First came the skulls. Then, the bodies. She knows she should be worried, but really, if they're dead they can't hurt her, can they?Preview:They stilled, staring at each other in a blind panic."Sweetie, hide the shovel!"
Relationships: Adam Maitland/Barbara Maitland, Beetlejuice & Lydia Deetz, Beetlejuice/Lydia Deetz, Charles Deetz & Delia Deetz
Comments: 10
Kudos: 33





	1. Forever Lasts Three Months

First came the skulls.

She was cleaning out her room when she saw it: barely tucked behind her favourite vintage lamp and treasured ink well, the macabre manifestation sat in peaceful silence while its coagulated blood made friends with her maths homework undisturbed.

That was, until she screamed.

Patchy and littered with blots of blood and thin shreds of sinewey muscle, its lifeless eyes looked through her tinted sunglasses and shadowed garments. It sneered, almost as if her attached head had offended it.

It probably did.

The head sat there for two minutes before Delia came to her rescue, screaming and covered in red paint, clay and wielding a bible; her father was close behind, a wooden cross in hand and gripping a bunch of rosaries. Lydia didn't miss the nunchucks tucked into her step mum's belt. Probably a gift from Otho.

The decapitated rabbit head was buried in the garden under Delia's new sculpture, entitled _'How long is forever?'_. Lydia thought her step mother's new obsession with Alice in Wonderland was darkly fitting, and in an attempt to get out of being life coached ( _"step-mum-coached, Lydia,"_ ), she let Delia use her crude adaptation of the _White Rabbit_ act as a grave marker for its decapitated cousin under the oak tree.

Delia was more than delighted to share this somewhat morbid experience with her step daughter. "Oh, our first burial together, Lyds! Isn't this sweet? Quick, take a picture!"

Charles just shook his head and did what Delia asked, coaxing Lydia to shuffle closer so he could fit them into the frame, insisting that yes, he did know how to work the camera, despite accidentally pressing the off button. Twice.

"I've got it this time!" Charles had insisted, certain, as he zoomed in close to the White Rabbit's sharp teeth.

"You must have got your artistic talents from your mother, Lydia," Delia remarked between the fifteenth retake.

Lydia, for her part, just grinned before running towards the house to find the shovel she knew her dad hid in the cupboard. He used it to scare away the squirrels that tended to find themselves in his kitchen whenever she forgot to close the windows at night.

Watching Delia place the statue down from the kitchen window, Adam had remarked that she looked " _a bit too_ _Delia-lighted_ ," and was met with a groan from his wife and a giggle from the goth girl covered in dirt and pointing a shovel at him.

" _That_ was the perfect Dad Joke, Adam," she had told him, before going back out to hand the delighted Delia the shovel as they posed for another picture. This time, even Lydia was delighted for there had been an actual _flash._

Later, in what she called 'The One Big Dark Room', she found that half the lens had been covered by her dad's thumb and in the background there was a non-tasteful blurry glob. How her father had managed to do that, she had no clue. It was kind of impressive, actually.

It was also unsalvigable, but at least it had their faces in it.

She'd make sure to hang it on her wall.

* * *

The sculpture lay in solemn guard over the decapitated rabbit head, until one clear night when lightning struck its twisted face and its shattered fragments blessed the ground it had religiously stood over.

Turns out, _forever_ lasts three months.

Delia was inconsolable for four.

Had Adam been less of a man, he would have said she was _Delia-stroyed_ or _Delia-evestated_ , but instead he gave her hot cocoa and listened to her play what she insisted was a melancholy tune on her triangle 'to cleanse away the bad omens'. In reality, it sounded like a cheery death march, but Adam had never been one to judge the eccentricities of the living.

Barbara, bless her dead soul, had tried to coax her into finding a new hobby. Planting, perhaps?

Meanwhile, the goth just shrugged at her step mum's antics, relieved that her midnight smoke escapes now no longer included avoiding the crooked stares of Delia's first attempt at ceramics.

It did, however, include a very lengthy talk about "lung disease, skin like grilled cheese, and saggy old asses," all of which were things that would happen to her if she kept up that nasty habit. At least, that's what Charles had insisted would happen to her eventually when he caught her leaning out of the kitchen window and finishing off a packet of cigarettes one night when he came down for a midnight snack.

The lecture lasted about ten minutes before the unmistakable sound of the bins being tipped over and the newly-potted plant pots shattering alerted the duo of their newfound company and they stilled, staring at each other in moment of blind panic.

Those were _Delia's_ plants.

"I'll scream and you get the shovel?"

"Deal."

Lydia giggled whilst she reached into the cupboard and heard her father scream into the star spotted ether, followed by the faint tapping of furry footsteps retreating. She threw the shovel into the black abyss for good measure, wheezing as it landed haphazardly onto the single survivor of Delia's potted plants. Then, silence.

"She's going to kill us."

"She might not notice."

"Nothing slips passed an unmedicated Delia, Dad."

"I'll buy replacements." Charles had never been so happy that Delia had been having an affair with _Prince Valium_ that night.

"Sweetie, _hide the shovel._ "

Needless to say, when they heard the knock from the front door and opened it to find red and blue lights intermittently glare at them, followed by a police officer with dark circles under his eyes and a pallid, sleep deprived expression on his face, the father and daughter duo were less than surprised.

In their haste, Lydia had forgotten to get rid of the shovel.

"Squirrels again, Mr Deetz?" Officer Nardole asked between yawns, spotting the item the goth was failing to hide behind her back.

He was met with twin sheepish grins and he sighed, heading back to his car after giving them both a warning and telling them to "Get a damn exterminator if you have to - also, it's Matthew's birthday next week and you're all invited."

"Only if you stock up on Delia's favourite wine!"

"They're in the fridge right now!" the sound of Officer Nardole's chuckle drifted out of his open window as he drove off down the hill.

The Nardoles were always sweet on them. Lydia, especially, ever since she insisted they hire her pro bono to photograph their wedding the month prior. She offered the same for Matthew's birthday, of which Jacob was more than happy to accept in his sleepy haze. Matt had so loved their wedding photos after all.

* * *

Lydia didn't think about the head until it returned.

Three months to the day, the head crawled back to its final resting place besides her vintage lamp and ink well. Without its fully rotted flesh and fur, she found its hollow sockets and chiseled cheekbones were considerably more palatable to share desk space with. Though still smelling putrid, a quick wash under the tap got rid of most of the soil and death, and a few spritz of Barbara's old perfume gave it a lavender aroma that didn't remind her of its glassy glaring eyes or its blood on her calculus term paper (that was something she could never fully explain to Miss Shannon).

She tucked the skull back where it was and worked on her psychology homework.

Between explaining the differences between asocial and antisocial people, the smell of lavender tickled her nose and she sneezed, getting up to grab a tissue only to catch a glimpse of Delia in the garden from outside her window. From what she could see, her step mum was bending down curiously to see a single wilted petunia behind her pristine pots.

"Oh god."

Lydia blew into the tissue and prayed.

_"LYDIA!"_

Her head dropped. Apparently, God was a sadist.


	2. Xylophone Spines

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ontop of her pillow was a new skull. It was wrapped with a blood red ribbon across its neck, like a poetically glittering noose.

It hadn't been long before the poltergeist's disappearance that the Deetzes decided that the Maitlands deserved a floor to themselves. It had been Charles' idea, seeing as the floor kept the one room in the house that he had managed to not let Delia and Otho get their hands on. Which, in turn, brought the two men into each other's good graces.

Turns out, Charles was a fan of autobiographical books (of which Adam was somewhat a collector of), and Adam was a fan of not having his room destroyed. It was an easy friendship.

When the family had offered the floor to the ghosts, they physically began to beam streaks of heavenly light which coated the house for the rest of the day. Hence, why Lydia always made a point to wear her sunglasses everywhere - much to her parents' dismay and obvious disapproval.

The rest of the residents of Winter River would mark that day I'm their town's personal history, for the light on the hill had caused three car crashes, a power outage at the local church, and a child to go partially blind in one eye. No one questioned that it came from the House on the Hill. 

With the Maitlands occupying the second floor, the attic was Lydia's for the taking and she immediately made herself welcome. 

The walls, of course, were black. 

During what Barbara had dubbed "Operation Lydia 2.0", all five occupants of the Deetz-Maitland household had armed themselves with a paint bucket and paintbrush and slathered the obsidian liquid onto every curve of the rounded window sills and bricked surfaces until there was no longer any trace of the boring brown or garish wallpaper that had once stood in its place. No wall had stood a chance.

By contrast, all her furniture had been a mixed batch of mismatched greys and silver, and with the help of her godparents, she was able to get everything assembled perfectly without having to pick up a power tool or peruse the pernickety instructions.

The window ledge that had opened out onto the roof had long been removed and bricked off (by Delia's persistent insistence) and the wall that had once held the entrance to the Neitherworld had been converted into a wall-to-wall shelving unit that Lydia had lovingly adorned with books, trinkets and trophies that she had accumulated over the years. 

This room was her paradise; her own Neitherworld.

Finally. 

Except now, she wasn't alone. Now, a cacophony of skulls occupied her living space. 

_Cohabitation_ , she had told herself. 

_They weren't like the first present_ , she told herself.

 _Dead animals probably always lose their heads and find themselves in conveniently placed areas of my room where I can definitely find them and give them a quick rinse before dousing them in Barbara's perfume._ Sure. All very believable statements.

This was all normal. 

Then, the bodies arrived. 

* * *

The first one appeared on her 18th birthday. 

Percy was a sweet boy. Genuinely, he was. Maybe _too_ sweet, Lydia thought to herself as she watched him sprint out of her house screaming like a banshee from her attic window. 

She sighed. 

Not five minutes ago, he had promised her that _she_ was the one who was going to be screaming. Course, she had been straddling his lap at the time and she imagined he meant that she would be screaming his name and not for his mummy (as he was doing now, rather pathetically so) as he tried desperately to start his car's engine. Though, who knows, maybe he was into that kinky shit? She wasn't one to kink shame. 

Though, of all the days a headless skeleton of a cat were to be presented under her covers it had to be today. The day she was almost certain she was going to become more than friendly with Sweet Percy Williams her not-so-much-friend-but-almost-friend-with-benefits. Figures.

Well, at least the cat now had a name: William. 

No, that was too pompous. 

Percy. 

_Yes_. 

Henceforth, the skeleton was christened Percy the Pussy, and she giggled, finding that stroking its xylophonic spine was oddly cathartic and helped to stem her libido.

Reverently, she lifted the headless skeleton and laid it ontop of her dresser, under the shelves with cheesy crime novels of femme fetals, badly written biographies, and a single squirrel skull.

 _That_ particular treasure she had found the day after Matthew Nardole's birthday bash. After depositing her negatives in The One Big Dark Room to develop them later, she snuck off to her room to have a little smoke (she had learned her lesson) when she saw it: ontop of her pillow was a new skull. It was wrapped with a blood red ribbon across its neck like a poetically glittering noose. 

The smoke was forgotten, and she spent the rest of the day admiring the squirrel's jagged teeth and vaguely wondering if _Barbara_ was the one leaving her the gifts for the ribbon smelled of her lavender perfume even before she had sprayed it herself in her unusual cleaning ritual.

It was her favourite skull.

This cat was different though. Never before had she been gifted a near perfect skeleton before.

Something was changing, she could tell, and that thought alone made her skin crawl with cold anticipation. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please comment so I know I'm not doing everything wrong haha. As always, stay safe, and thanks for reading!


	3. Redwood Ribbon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She couldn't help but immediately feel the new accessory mimicked a crude facsimile of slit wrists.

She was enamoured with the ribbon.

Lydia wore only one colour; this was a universal truth. 

Save for the time she had donned that yellow dress and gulped down the reflexive repulsion of having to withstand Maxie Dean's incorrigible flirting before she could summon an evil worse than the pseudo-demon that was the handsy Chairman of _Botco Industries._

The canary with sleeves had long been disposed of, lovingly tossed into the crater in the floorboards that her ex-husband had been unlucky enough to have met his fate in. 

She remembered lazily throwing in the bouquet for good measure as she gleefully watched the sandworm gnaw at the flailing poltergeist, just as they transported to where she suspected was Saturn. Something about bouquet-throwing being good luck and hoping that the sandworm would think of it as dessert.

Beetlejuice had definitely gotten _his_ just desserts that was for damn sure.

She didn't count the wedding dress as an infringement on her monotone colour scheme.

In her eyes, that part of her life never happened. She _hadn't_ made an irreversible deal with _'the demon straight from hell'_ because he was a _poltergeist_ not a demon and so really, _technically_ , there wasn't a solid foundation in their verbal contract to begin with. They _hadn't_ exchanged 'I do's' because _he_ had spoken _for_ her, and the used ring definitely _wasn't_ eternally stuck on her finger did _not_ twinkle devilishly at her whenever it kissed a beam of light. 

She also was definitely not in denial. Of course not.

So really, besides those two blips, she hadn't worn anything other than the comforting embrace of black and now the silver sliver of a wedding band on her finger. The second thing she couldn't change - though not for lack of trying. As soon as she realised that the ring was welded onto her finger, she had attempted to paint it black but the cursed item had been tainted with repellant charms and she deemed her efforts fruitless.

However, the rosewood ribbon was closer to black than her wedding dress had been, and the pull towards the material had been seductive and unwavering from the moment she saw it nestled between her pillows.

It wasn't long before she broke her own rule as she slipped it off the squirrel's throat and fastened it onto her awaiting wrist.

 _Perfect_.

* * *

Delia noticed the changes first. It had been hard not to being that the girl was her sole patient for two years and her whole world the next three and counting.

Sure, their relationship had been a relentless game of push and pull, but they were past that. 

At least, she _hoped_ they were.

There were things about Lydia that Delia found she never disclosed with her husband. She had told herself that it was life-coachee/ life-coacher confidentiality, but she knew she already had enough of the girl's respect to not entertain that thought for more than a modicum of a second.

Truth be told, Lydia deserved a mother not a snitch. 

And so began the lies. 

She hadn't told Charles about their daughter's new smoking habit, wanting to deal with it herself. She should have, but when the sixteen year old came back from school smelling like lavender perfume, tobacco and teenaged rebellion, Delia made sure to give their steaks extra _colour_ that night so she could sneak off to find the hidden pack in her backpack when Lydia snuck off to the bathroom to secretly dispose of the inedible dinner without hurting her step mother's feelings.

Delia never found the packet but she did make sure to stiffen the latch on Lydia's windows so she couldn't do it from her bedroom. She should have known that that wouldn't have stopped the girl. 

She also hadn't told Charles about the new beau she was seeing, thinking that Lydia would tell him eventually. 

She hadn't planned on going into the cemetery that day - most of her family had been buried in New York, after all - but on her return from the shops, her eyes had been relentlessly attacked by irregular streams of light. Almost as if summoned, she had followed the beams as they passed the cemetery gate and caught the suspect: a silver ring catching the sun's rays and attached to none other than--

She squeaked, having caught her stepdaughter in a heated liplock with a certain blonde-haired classmate.

Apparently, Percy had a sister and Lydia thought she was cute.

They pulled back with a gasp almost immediately and Lydia had been too embarrassed to introduce them, ditching her date to wait in the shotgun seat of Delia's car, steeling herself for a lecture that didn't come.

"I thought you didn't like Claire." 

The goth just shrugged. "It's..." 

"Complicated?" 

"We _were_ having an argument." 

Delia just chuckled and squeezed Lydia's shoulder.

The drive back had been awkward, but at least Lydia seemed to be taking on her advice about dental dams just as she had been taking on a whole new hue of red on her cheeks. Lydia had tried to hide it by pushing her hair into her face.

 _That's_ when she spotted it.

Delia hadn't always been in support of her daughter's fashion choices, seeing them as a gothic take on art nouveau meets Dave McKean. She had often tried to encourage her to wear more bright colours in the past - that godawful yellow dress notwithstanding. Had she known what an awful being Mr Dean was, she would have allowed Lydia to lock herself in her room - hell, she'd give her the key herself. 

Nevertheless, the sudden fashion statement threw off Delia's normal delight in seeing her stepdaughter journey into more pigmented colour pallets, and she couldn't help but immediately feel the new accessory mimicked a crude facsimile of slit wrists.

She had seen them enough before.

Hell, she had been the instigator for her _own_ when her first husband left her and had only stopped when she met Otho - _Kevin_ \- and taken up coaching broody teenage girls about the joys of life _"Because there is no life without 'I'!"_

She sighed and hoped that the ribbon would disappear soon. It was giving her the creeps.

* * *

Charles remembered the day he felt the winds shift.

It was _their day_. June 22nd. The day of Emily's death. 

"Tradition states that we must always honour our fallen angels," she had started, handing Barbara a wrench as the ghost attempted to fix the kitchen sink. 

The more powerful of the two, Barabara still had no clue how to handle her newfound gifts and the appliances in the Deetz-Maitland household had suffered for it.

In an explosive argument with Adam about whether or not you could place a power card down last in a game of Uno, her newest victim had been the sink. They hadn't been able to clean their dishes for a week and the handyman had refused to service the Haunted house on the Hill. 

"Honey, are you suggesting your mother was a demon?" 

He still remembered when Emily would hold Halloween in the summer just to scare off the neighbours when they would least expect it, dragging along her eternally grinning clone to help with her most foolhardy pranks on the annoying couple across the street.

She snickered, remembering the same. "Most definitely." 

He tipped his mug of coffee towards her and she continued. 

Lydia had always had a flare for the dramatics, a trait she had most definitely picked up from her mother. So when she gleefully suggested they bungee jump off the Winter River bridge in commemoration of Emily's 5th year death day, she was met with two coffee spit takes, a hacking Delia and the sound of the pipes exploding. 

They went to the carnival instead.

It was at the end of the day when they found themselves walking along the aged pavilion, ice creams in hand and his arm over his daughter's shoulders as he recounted his encounters with her mother.

Growing up in Winter River, Charles Deetz had lived across the street from his future wife all of his childhood. They had taken strolls along that very pavilion and had ice cream on the pier, protectively shielding their faces and their treats from the relentless seagulls that used the blissfully carefree carnival as a hunting ground for easy pickings. 

Lydia giggled as she threw a piece of her cone on the ground and watched the onslaught of feathers and beaks peck at each other for the morsel of a wafer.

"Your mother used to do that. Drove me crazy," he muttered. 

They reached the end of the pier and he watched as the girl leaned over the railing and threw pieces of cone at the birds.

Without the incessant squeals of joy and the onslaught of carnival music, he was able to see her perfectly. A cool breeze knotted her hair and he watched a soft smile curl at her lips and flicker as the fluorescent lights fluttered across his daughter's face.

His heart melted with his ice cream; his daughter was _happy_.

So why did his stomach sink?

* * *

Three weeks and there was no sign of the relentless ribbon's grip on her daughter's wrist loosening. There was something so abundantly off-putting about that single unassuming strip of silk snuggly pressed against her veins that made every inch of Delia's skin crackle and flare with goosebumps. 

_"Bye, Delia!"_ Was followed by the door slamming shut and the woman sank into her seat, as the walls shook around her. 

She had stopped offering to drive Lydia to school at the girl's own insistence, at first accepting it as the girl wanting to have some time with her new beau, but Lydia had stopped seeing anyone, and the Brewsters had moved to Seattle following the patriarch's sudden job offer.

She tried not to think that the ribbon had been the cause of Lydia's drastic weight loss. She had always been such a tiny slip of a girl, but this was... something else. It was excessive.

She was almost _skeletal_.

Surely the material hadn't been the catalyst of her sunken cheekbones and hollowed eyes? 

_But the timing..._

She didn't want to break the trust she shared with Lydia, but with a resolute sigh, she made her way to her husband's study, where he sat hunched over a stack of college prospectuses, developed photos and crumpled pieces of paper. 

She saw him then, _really saw him_ , for he looked at her the same way she looked at her mirror, and the same way she had looked at her daughter.

 _Terrified_.

His eyes were weighed down by purple rings of skin, his hair had thinned to lanky locks and his face had taken on an unnatural pallor that had Delia reach out to stroke his cheeks in concern and in a misguided attempt to rub some heat into them. Her worry for her daughter was momentarily sidelined as she cradled the lamenting man in her arms. 

He gave a mournful whimper before whispering a broken, _"How do we help her?"_ , into his wife's chest.

She felt his body shake beneath her and he let her kiss the tears away. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave a comment so I know what I can improve on! Or just to say hi haha. Thanks for reading!


	4. Uxoricide is Strictly Forbidden

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She only hoped the girl would be smart enough to keep herself alive for as long as possible.

_Heat_ was a hot commodity in the Neitherworld. It was more than just a means to keep warm: it was the _essence_ of life. Everything from happiness, lust, passion, and pain; you name it, Heat had it. The stuff was lauded to bring back sensations ghosts inevitably lost in their mediocre eternity and the element’s rarity made it a valuable treasure that few could afford and even less could procure.

Most ghosts forgot the sensation of warmth once they kicked the bucket. Naturally, the Ghost with the Most was the exception.

Beetlejuice thought it was because he was born dead; Juno thought it was because he was desperate to feel alive.

It had earned him a pretty penny from the black market in the past, selling blacked-out canisters of the stuff whenever his bio-exorcist jobs required time in the Outerworld. They rarely did, but whenever he had the chance, he made sure to juice to Jamaica and siphon into the country’s mass supply before he was inevitably pulled back to where he came from. The most he got at one time was three canisters.

That was three decades ago.

He was strapped for cash.

 _Cash_ was also a hot commodity in the Neitherworld. Money made the world go round and death was no exception. It had to be a form of subliminal torture employed by The Powers That Be, he was sure, that enabled things like civil servitude, capitalism and the monarchy to exist in both planes of existence. It was a cold fact that everyone learned to accept when death from Death was not an option. Of course, exorcisms were a thing, but ghosts needed a human for that, and humans needed to be scared to perform the deed correctly.

As he had learned, those things were _not_ mutually exclusive.

He grunted, then, remembering bright red tule, silver bands and the shitstorm of a shotgun wedding. Turns out, humans were not inherently scared of the paranormal as he had been led to believe. A fact that, unlike heat and cash, had thrown him off his game. Heat he could procure, Cash he could swindle, but his Freedom… _the Deetz bitch_ had been the only thing he couldn't get his hands on and it fucking pissed him off.

He’d get her back, obviously. It was just a matter of _when_.

* * *

It was out to get her.

Months of anxiously waiting on edge, prepping for this moment to face it head on and now the bastard had finally come.

_Summer._

Nothing despised Lydia more than the Sun.

It had been something that the goth had spent years denying, spending most of her formative years slathering on thick layers of sun cream, wearing sunhats, and retreating to the safety of the shade. All of which, she found, did next to nothing to prevent her from coming home looking like a lobster’s cousin and spending the next few days shedding layers of flaky skin across the house like a snake's apprentice.

Of course, the irony that was her love for heat absorbent clothing was not lost on her.

It was also at this time that Delia would try to bargain and bribe her way into wearing brighter clothing to combat the sun. It never worked, but the extra attention she got from her stepmother was always a nice welcome. Last year, Delia had offered to buy her a new camera if she wore the frilly lilac dress she had bought at their local Goodwill. What she didn’t expect was for Barbara to shriek in delight and take her old dress back.

This year had been no different.

The moment Lydia stepped foot into the kitchen she was hit with a brown wave of putrid steam that made her eyes tear and her throat clamp in a misguided attempt at survival. Holding her cardigan to her face, she jumped over fallen fruit and side-stepped passed patches of burnt bread, making her way to the table to see the yearly show that was Delia’s attempt at breakfast.

It was the closest thing they had for a tradition.

Strange. Unusual. Just how she liked it.

There, passed the thick layer of steam, she was met with the sight of a frazzled, spatula-wielding Delia throwing out instructions at two equally stressed ghosts whilst her father sat across from her, orange juice in hand. He handed her a glass and they looked on at the eventual disaster unfold, sipping on their beverages.

“Matthew Nardole has the Fire Department on standby.”

“I thought they refused to come after last year’s incident. You know, with the _— did she just put paprika in the batter?_ ”

“Oh god.” Her father took another sip, wincing as Delia did indeed throw paprika at the pancakes. He turned to her. “Can’t you just _pretend_ to wear it? She spent all night making it.”

“Frilly collars, flower embroidery, hell - the puffy sleeves I can forgive - but Dad?"

"Yes, Pumpkin?"

 _"P_ _astels?_ ”

He relented. Delia had sealed her own fate. “Matt’s doing it as a favour. He really loved the pictures you took for his birthday by the way.”

They both jumped at the sound of ceramic hitting wood as Delia served each of them equally generous stacks of glowing, orange disks.

She was wrong.

It seemed that Delia had changed tactics. Gone were the days where she could bargain and blackmail Lydia into wearing colours that wouldn’t cause her skin to burn and flake.

Delia had turned to homicide.

“Is that… is it _edible_ , Delia?”

“Sure it is!” As if to prove a point; and faster than anyone had time to stop her; she ripped a piece and swallowed.

And immediately turned into a shade of pumice.

“I’ll call an ambulance!” Adam leaped across the room, reaching for the landline.

“Adam, you’re dead, pass me the phone!”

The chorus of sirens wailed passed the open window as Lydia attempted to push her plate to the other end of the table.

“It’s okay, Dads, I called one ten minutes ago. I have Jacob Nardole on speed dial.”

* * *

After serving his mandatory time in the Waiting Room, his summons with Juno had been relatively anticlimactic. He had been ready to trade sharp barbs, throw a snake into her mouldy bra or get shitfaced and vomit ectoplasm on her ash-covered paperwork.

He didn’t have the time to.

Upon entering her office, Juno had given him a dirty look, grew his head back and handed him a slip of paper with her customary snarl.

“Congratulations. It’s unbreakable.” She took a hit of nicotine and grimaced at the sight of him.

The paper in his hand burned his irises. It read:

_**Certificate of Marriage** _

_This is to certify that:_

_**LAWRENCE BEETLEJUICE** and **LYDIA DEETZ**_

_were united in the unholy bonds of deathly matrimony_

“ _Shit_ , the bitch said _I do_.”

_Fucking. Lydia. Deetz._

His awe was short lived, however, when he caught the tail end of a smirk that Juno had been trying to supress _._

 _Of course there was a catch_. If his life were a crude attempt at a metaphorical rollercoaster, each loop-de-loop would end with pissed-pants, crying toddlers and a decapitation. Preferably in that order.

She was _not_ going to ruin this moment for him.

“Dead priest, dead marriage certificate. For the Ghost with the Most, you really didn’t have the foresight to conjure up a living Father? Not even through possession?”

“What can I say? _I got Daddy issues_.”

The eye roll was a necessary habit she employed when Beetlejuice had been her assistant back in the day. It had saved time and energy that she would have otherwise used in throttling him. Unprofessional, sure, but it saved her a lot of paperwork and headache.

“As your marriage was officiated by a one of ours, you’ve got to wait for her death for it to count and – _no, you cannot murder the girl, Beetlejuice_.”

He dropped his hand and grunted. Worth a shot.

The woman’s whole being seemed to whither the longer she stayed in contact with the poltergeist, wondering again how she was able to last so long with the sad impersonation of a man as an assistant. He must have slipped something stronger into her cigs.

“We all have rules. Uxoricide is strictly forbidden in the certificate and—”

“But not Mariticide? What about _my_ rights! _This is sexism!_ ”

Juno merely raised a thin brow at his outburst. Unfortunately for her, she knew Beetlejuice better than most. It was because of this she knew, undoubtedly, that the poltergeist had next to no socio-political leanings. If he had to side with any, Juno had no qualms in betting it would be anarchism. She wouldn’t be surprised if he had a hand in founding it.

"What rights? _You're dead_. It’s not as if she can harm you, _Beetle_.”

“I’d like to see the bitch try.”

For a brief moment, Juno’s un-beating heart felt a sense of pity for Lydia Deetz. The poltergeist had the libido to rival Valentino and an ego to topple Narcissus. Any attempt to kill the bastard would no doubt only serve to turn him on.

She only hoped the girl would be smart enough to keep herself alive for as long as possible.

“Show her some respect.”

He had grumbled something so low that Juno couldn’t quite hear but sounded suspiciously like _‘I’ll show her respect if she shows me her ass’_ , at which point she was running out of cigarette butts to throw at his moulding face and settled for throwing him out of her office and into a place he would be better accustomed to instead.

* * *

The Roadhouse was as much of a shithole as he remembered it.

“ _House arrest?_ Well, fuck you too, Junebug!”

Screaming into the empty abyss had been his go-to past time the first couple of times he had been placed in the Roadhouse for insubordination amongst other things. Sure, it didn’t beat getting drunk off his tits or jerking off like a teenager in heat, but at it certainly helped him to know his link to Juno meant she would _always_ hear him curse her name.

Dilapidated bricks barely withstood their own weight, seemingly content with allowing the blasé breeze reduce it to another indiscriminate pile of rubble in the orange sand. The only thing that held it somewhat upright was its loyalty to a certain dragster-cum-dog, and for that, Beetlejuice was begrudgingly grateful for the metal mutt.

The inside was no different. The first thing that attacked Beetlejuice’s since-forgotten sense of smell, was the odour of putrescent sustenance. That was the least of his problems. With the amount of accumulated dirt and grime, it would be a miracle if he were even able to _see_ the food he had left to rot five years ago. The only thing that rivalled the ever-thickening layer of dust on his floorboards was the misshapen shards of smashes beer bottles that had embedded themselves into each groove and kissed each exposed surface. A clutter of contorted needles lay haphazardly on the ground, whilst writhing, juicy maggots saw purchase on the rusting metal, seeing them as makeshift playground apparatus on their breaks between each decaying meal.

The damage to his jailhouse had been so prevalent and so severe that Beetlejuice had no choice but to float in order to avoid catching some sort of post-mortem hepatitis B.

Ginger and Jacques had since vacated the premises, serving both their sentences to the full not five years ago. It hadn’t surprised him that they hadn’t stuck around long enough to welcome him with open arms. They were roommates, nothing more, but still, it irked him to no end when he tripped on one of the spider’s countless tap shoes on the way to the kitchen.

He ignored the weird pang in his chest as he threw the useless material at the sink.

It was just him now, and he was alone.

Utterly, fucking alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few notes, this fic resides in all mediums of Beetlejuice - the movie, cartoon and musical - as I have an undying love for all of them equally, so if there are any references that you find, feel free to tell me in the comments! If you're confused, intrigued or just wanna say hi leave a comment too! I respond to everyone haha. Anyway, stay safe and thanks for reading!


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